Thursday, April 3, 2008

Guangzhou

We left Hangzhou yesterday and arrived in Guangzhou, where we will be working with the American Consulate to get Joshua's visa so we can bring him home.

It was kind of bittersweet watching Joshua look out the plane window as we left Hangzhou. He had no idea he was leaving the place of his birth and the home of his birth family.

What he did realize very quickly is that he does NOT like plane rides! Everyone else on the plane was also made aware of this. Yes, it's going to be a very long flight back across the Pacific.

Guangzhou is very different than Hangzhou and I think it may be more representative of cities in China. Hangzhou was a beautiful city and there was obvious wealth everywhere. In fact, it was voted the number one leisure city in China. Guangzhou is another story. Smoggy and densly packed, there are 14 million people that live in this city. It looks like many of them live in these really tall, colorless apartment buildings.

The place we are staying is called Shamian Island. It's not really an island, but a formerly British section of the city surrounded on most sides by a river. We plan to explore it more today.

We skipped our group excursion today - it was a trip to a Buddhist temple to have our babies blessed by the monks. We know where our blessings come from.

Back in Hangzhou, Joshua was given a special gift from his orphanage before we left. Some of the older kids there made him a Chinese embroidery, which said, "Happiness forever." It will be a special reminder to us of the people who cared for him his first year, and of the kids he left behind.